Our Bedroom: Much Less Dungeon-like

April 11, 2016

When we first moved into the house, the bedroom looked like this

Not super attractive, huh? Dirty, gross, unsanitary, filthy, disgusting…any I’m missing in there? Needless to say, the thought of sleeping in here wasn’t that appealing to me.

Luckily our real estate agent is an awesome human being and gifted us a professional house scrubbing before we moved in, but we told them to just skip this room because the grossness was too much to deal with – and the #1 culprit was the disgusting blue carpet. So one night before we moved in Chris and I rolled up the carpet and got it out while we still had the dumpsters out front

It was gross. I held my breath. And prayed that it didn’t shed disgusting carpet particles all over me. I definitely took a shower as soon as I got home.

But after the carpet was gone, the concrete floors weren’t very inviting either

Neither was that toilet that was sitting in the middle of the floor at one point 🙂

A little explanantion: even with a HUGE scrubbing from the cleaners, the toilets were still BLACK at the bottom of the tank. So dirty looking still in fact that Zoe was literally afraid to go into the bathroom because she was convinced that there was perpetually poo in the bottom of them. So we did a quick replacement of the one in our bathroom and the main bathroom. The things you do for the kiddos 🙂

But back to the bedroom…

So we had concrete floors and carpets were coming. What was on the list before carpets? First off was that we needed to remove the baseboards. We didn’t NEED to, but it would make install easier, and they were ugly and gross, so we figured we might as well now. And once they were gone, things were looking even less inviting

Hello framing

It was dirty and pretty unappealing. Obviously it was cleaned up.

But there was one more GIANT to do list before the carpets went in: the concrete slab. The problem was that at some point there was a second pour – the center part of the flooring. And over time some parts of this became inches out of level. It was SO FUCKING out of level. We thought of a bunch of things we could do to fix it. #1 on the list was jacking it all out and repouring it – but that would be horrendously expensive. That was really just the dream, but entirely not possible at this point in our lives. So we talked about several other logical approaches – logical in terms of time and money spent. We didn’t want to spend a ton of cash, nor did we want the project to take a huge amount of time – we wanted carpet because we were tired of being so fucking cold. And we knew no solution other than jacking the whole thing out and starting over from scratch would result in a perfect outcome.

So what we decided to do was Chris took 8 bags of self leveler and used them on the seem from the original pour on the outside and the interior, second pour

It took him and a friend about 2 hours the night before the carpets went in (last Sunday). It wasn’t perfect, but it was A LOT better than it was before. And what was even better was that once the carpet went in, you couldn’t feel how uneven it was anymore. SUCCESS!

I cannot tell you how much I feel like my life has improved with carpet in here. It’s not cold and dirty. It no longer feels like an outdoor patio in my bedroom. It’s GLORIOUS!

Honestly, having carpet in here makes it really, actually feel like a bedroom. And it’s wonderful having our bed back in the room too. We had been sleeping with our bed in the big room from last Sunday night to this past Thursday (the carpets went in exactly a week ago). With the baseball season having started again, it’s meant I’ve been getting home pretty late (games usually end after 10, then we have to finish up and drive home). So it hasn’t really made us excited to move the 3 pieces of our bed back into the bedroom at 10:45pm. As a result we slept in the big room longer than we had planned. But now after sleeping in this comfy room for 4 nights, I can safely report that I am SO MUCH HAPPIER my bed is not sitting in THIS room anymore

It’s the little things in life 🙂

Pretty Pretty Concrete Slab

April 8, 2016

Oohhh the concrete slab. The pretty pretty slab 🙂

When we first toured the house the floor of the garage was almost 100% covered. Save for the small walk way they left from the door from the kitchen to the washer and dryer that were in here. So we didn’t know the condition of the slab. When they left and the place was ours we saw just how bad of shape it was in. There were cracks everywhere, it was uneven and slanted in certain parts

If we were just using the garage for storage, it would have mostly been an aesthetics issue. But this will be the workshop where we have the miter saw, table saw, work table, etc. all set up. So a flat and level slab is a necessity.

It was a bummer to realize we had to fork up a chunk of change to redo the slab, but we needed to. We got two quotes. Usually we get 3 whenever we hire out, but this time we were on a bit of a time crunch, so we only went with two. The first one came in over $5k, and the second was over $6k. Ughhhh. This price wasn’t terrible. Just really tough to swallow. The work was: demo the existing slab, haul it out, lay all the necessary rebar and other prep work and then pour and finish the slab. Things are almost 100% of the time more expensive in CA, and especially in the Bay Area just because the cost of living here. And, the real estate market is currently still insane, so contractors can afford to charge a little more because they can pick and choose their work. When the market eventually tanks (which is inevitable in a couple/few years), contractors will lower their price again because there won’t be as much work to go around.

We asked the contractor who gave us the lower bid if there was anything he could do to bring the price down. Chris got him down to about $4600. Of course, we thought about DIYing ourselves. So we priced that out too. Chris ran all the numbers and figured out that for us to do all the work ourselves it would cost about $3800 (materials to buy, tools to rent, etc.) It would also take us much longer because it would be worst case scenario just Chris, and best case scenario maybe 3 or 4 people that Chris would direct. We ultimately decided that because time was of the essence and we wouldn’t be saving a TON (off the total project cost – doing it ourselves was only about 80% the cost), that we would hire it out. We had basically just 7 days between getting the keys and when we moved in, so it really needed to be done. Chris needed a place to move all his tools into and we needed a place to be able to not only find tools to work on the house, but find tools to operate our business.

So we bit the bullet and paid $4600 for a new concrete slab. They came in the Friday before we moved when Chris was at the house working on other things. They had a skid steer and ripped the shit out of that concrete pretty quickly

Chris loved getting to watch the process

Once the concrete was out they got things all cleaned up and prepped the space for the pour. The rebar was put in and things looked good. The next day was Saturday and I took the girls to Costco in the morning. We’d be moving in that Monday and we wanted to stock up on necessities that we had been low on. I came by to drop things off just as the guys were finishing off the pour. Perfect timing, because that meant we all got to put a handprint in the concrete 🙂 Zoe thought this was absolutely fabulous

Merritt had no idea what was going on

And then, there were all of our hands at our new house

I loved it. Our slab was officially complete 🙂

But it didn’t stop there. We decided that we should rip all the drywall off and put up plywood. Why? Well, 2 reasons: for shear strength and to make it easier to build all the storage that will live in here. Once all the drywall would be ripped down we could much more easily run all of our electrical lines for the shit ton of outlets we want. And then we will install sheets of plywood as our walls (like we did at the Picardy house). Plywood provides great shear strength, and in earthquake country that’s a good thing to give some help to.

Naturally we made family help us 🙂

My step dad has been coming over pretty frequently to help out with Zoe watching or house working during the week. The guy has finally decided it’s time to take his work life easier (he has been a lawyer for over 40 years), so now instead of being at the office on a Friday I make him come to our house sometimes 🙂 The good news is that he actually likes it 🙂 We made him rip off all the drywall from the walls

And he did double duty with Zoe watching and drywall ripping down

Nothing like a kid in a diaper hauling away drywall to a dumpster. That girl melts my heart 🙂

After 2 days the drywall was all ripped down

We’re almost at the point where Chris can seal the floor. He’s going to paint it with an epoxy paint, but he needs to let the concrete cure for the full 30 days. Once the epoxy goes down he can work on the electrical and we can hang all the plywood. Then we can get to setting up the workshop. Something Chris is pretty excited for.

Asbestos Abatement & Concrete Painting

April 6, 2016

We had asbestos tile on the floor downstairs (both in the big room and our bedroom)

If you’re careful, asbestos is okay to encapsulate (if we put another floor on top of it), but for 2 reasons we decided that before we moved in we wanted it abated.

The first: we were getting a new furnace for heat and the old ducting was asbestos ducting, so it needed to be removed. For our bedroom having asbestos tile under the carpet wasn’t a huge deal because carpet would be going in, but we didn’t like having asbestos tile in the big room because even though we’ll eventually put in a different floor, we aren’t at that point yet and so we don’t want to be walking on or having Merritt crawling on loose asbestos tiles. So when we had the company quote us for the ducting, we also had them quote us for the flooring. I’m willing to DIY a lot of stuff, but this isn’t something you really want to DIY unless you really know what you’re doing. Our agent told us that we could expect to spend about $1500 to have the ducting removed, so when they quoted us $3500 for everything we opted to go for it. Better to get it all done now.

We thought it was just going to take 2 days, but it actually took them 4. It was annoying that things took longer because it pushed back the furnace replacement (no one could be inside working while they were here). Apparently this week is Asbestos Awareness week, and like I said Monday I would be posting something about that today. The Mesothelioma and Asbestos Awareness Center and I teamed up to spread awareness about how dangerous asbestos can be. 99% of the time I turn down these requests, but this felt really relevant, and, well asbestos and cancer sucks. So I thought I would give them some (uncompensated) love and accepted

I didn’t get any money, no specific plug or endorsement asked for, I just wanted to help educate people about some of the dangers of asbestos. It’s definitely important to remediate it right.

Okay, moving on.

So it took 4 days to clear it out and sadly the cleaning left a really oily residue on the floors. Luckily CBH and his girlfriend were over a DAY BEFORE the move to help us clean it up 🙂

It involved pouring A LOT of cleaner all over the floor and then scrubbing the shit out of it. It wasn’t fun, so we are thankful for their hard work.

The residue that was left was from a product they used to help remove the glue from the tiles. It was especially difficult to get the glue off in the big room, so this room was especially oily. And our plan is to live with the concrete floors for a while and in order for us to have painted them to seal them the concrete really needed to be cleaned well. Once they were all clean and the furnace had been replaced (they uses this room as a staging area for their materials) we were able to paint it.

We used a porch paint – just simple and cheap. The color we used was Benjamin Moore Flint. We had almost a gallon leftover from another job (the client didn’t want to keep it) and so it just cost us the price of another gallon. I like dark floors and this felt like a good, dark neutral.

Because we had to paint this after we moved in, we painted it in 2 shifts. We tried to have the movers put everything along one wall, but they didn’t really follow great directions, so we had to sort of corral everything together. Once things were together on one side we could work on the other side. So one night after the girls were asleep we got to work. Chris had done one more cleaning earlier that day and set up the fan to make sure it was allllll clean. So when they were asleep with the help of a fan we were able to get to painting. I did the cut-ins

And Chris did the field

That’s our general painting MO these days. It’s a strategy that works well for us. Chris is fast as fucking hell with a roller, and I like the meticulousness of the cut-ins, so we’re a good team.

We got 1/2 done the first night

Then a couple days later we moved everything over and did another cleaning. It was the weekend and Zoe was eager to help Chris out

And again, with the help of the fan we were able to get it painted that same night after the girls went to sleep. It took a while – almost 2 weeks – to go from asbestos tile to painted floors, but that’s how we got here

I got several comments (both on Facebook and email) a while ago when we first posted about the house about the floors in here. Many people suggested doing a skim coat or polishing the concrete and having that be the floor in here. I admit that I totally like that look and it is incredibly practical for the space (living area, office, utility), but man, concrete is HARD. That may sound ridiculous because DUH concrete is fucking hard, but it is HARD to stand on. I also have really bad knees (I had knee surgery from soccer when I was 19). I like comfy floors. And concrete starts to really hurt my feet, knees and hips after about 15 minutes. Yes, I’m a full on sissy. Who cares. But I DEFINITELY want this floor to be really comfy because we will be spending a lot of time down here in the decades to come. Of course, finishing the flooring in here won’t come for a while (months, or more likely years), but I think my front runner for the time being is cork. We’ll see if that sticks, but for now it seems like it serves all of my requirements: one floor throughout the space, comfy, utilitarian friendly, durable. We’ll see how things shake out when we actually lay flooring in here (like I said before, most like a couple years), but at least it’s nice to have the asbestos out for now.

Just Thinking About Stuff

April 4, 2016

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. There’s been a “shift” in blogging lately – less comments, less follows or Pins in social media…less of things. I’ve never felt a change personally because I’ve never been a “BIG” blog. You readers I have are small in numbers, but giant in voice. A huge plus in being a little bitty blog is that there is no outside pressure. There is certainly pressure I put on myself. When we were barely working on the house anymore I definitely felt pressure from myself to just be able to post. I wanted you guys to get to read SOMETHING. I never felt like you guys ordered anything, or made me feel bad or ANYTHING like that ever. But I wanted to be able to give you something. It feels wonderful now to have the problem that there are TOO MANY projects, and not enough time to get to post about it.

I’ve been thinking about those posts. Thinking about how to organize them, what order to put them in, getting worried that I was “backed up” because some things I haven’t blogged about have now happened a week or two ago. But mostly I think about presentation.

Is that weird?

When I redesigned the blog I definitely did it as a way to freshen up and take myself more seriously. I feel like I’ve developed as a designer in my professional life, and so I wanted to just give myself a little boost in my blogging life. I feel like I’ve evolved a little bit. And I think in anything anyone looks at that they’ve done for almost 7 years, there will FOR SURE be things you feel like you’ve gotten better or worse at.

But one thing I was feeling a little bad about lately was that I am SO LAZY about the photos I take. I remember one time a couple years ago Young House Love posted about how they edit each photo that they put on their blog (adjust contrast, etc.) I was shocked by their dedication. They had a formula set, so once you’re used to Photoshop, if you know what you’re going to do to every single photo – it’s easy. But still, even then, when I had a lot more time on my hands, I remember thinking, “Oh shit, no one has time for that…” 🙂 But it also shows their dedication.

I will never have that dedication. For my picture taking – it’s just not there. The other day Chris was working on some plumbing, I was holding the baby and there was no camera around – so out came my phone. When we were working here at night before we moved, there was definitely no camera around – so out came my phone. Now, granted our phones take great pictures, but there’s nothing like a great digital camera. But, fuck, I don’t have time for that 🙂 And honestly, I would rather be able to have an opportunity to TAKE the picture, I am too frazzled to tell Chris, “STOP!” and then run around and try to find the camera, lol.

But sometimes I feel like I “should” be doing that. Isn’t that what all the great blogs do? They have amazing photos. I’m not even talking about staging things, I’m just talking about taking the time to compose a good shot and use a camera that allows for so much detail. I wish I could take the time and not feel like I was running around to even just get a camera phone shot. But that’s me. I’m just glad to have any photo 🙂

I will be completely honest too – I’ve also wondered if it was finally time to accept sponsorship from companies. I’ve turned these down for a LONG time. Very rarely do I accept any. I don’t get a shit ton of requests (because, like I said, Picardy is a small blog and big companies don’t really care about small timers so much), but they are there. And in fact, my post on Wednesday will reference one – but it was for no money and was for cancer awareness (asbestos and our remediation of our asbestos tiles) so it felt like it made sense.

I’ve NEVER wanted things to not feel genuine. EVER. EVER. E.V.E.R.

That has been my #1.

I have always wanted to be myself. COMPLETELY. And I wanted that to be apparent first and foremost. I mean, my header says “building shit & raising girls,” so I want everyone who finds themselves here for the first time to know what I’m about. I’ll drop a “fuck,” and not give a fuck 🙂

I didn’t want to work with a company and have to water myself down. I don’t want to not be myself. And I never wanted things to not feel relevant. That was my very close #2 rule: things had to be relevant. If I was working on a bathroom, I’d never want to have some random company want me to post about air conditioners. That just feels ridiculous.

But I spend a lot of time on this blog. And now with having 2 kiddos, our business, working on other projects, renovating this house…I’ve come to realize that it is okay, it doesn’t mean I’m a “sell out” if every once in a while I accept $ or a product from a company. This is a hobby that takes me away (my choice) from earning money at jobs, or spending time with my kiddos and fella. I never want to get to a point where things don’t feel like me. I NEVER EVER want to do that. I will still swear. And I’ll still admit when I hate things 🙂 Speaking of which, last week I almost wanted to curse out the returns person at Home Depot who wouldn’t allow us to return any of our items without our receipt because we had “done too many returns without a receipt that month.” Even though we have a Pro Rewards card and one of the terms of that card is that YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE A RECEIPT. God damn I fucking HATE Home Depot.

I just want to be honest with you guys. I want to be honest with myself. I want you to know what I’m thinking about as I’ve been blogging here for almost 7 years. There are things that I wish I was better at, things that I like that I do, things I may fiddle with. Ya know? Mostly I just always try to keep things honest. And I wanted to share that with you guys and just know that I appreciate this weird little internet friendship we have. And to thank you for your support.

Alright, off to take some camera phone pictures about projects I need to blog about! I have 17 drafts in my folder, gah!

Picardy is FOR SALE

April 1, 2016

Well, the day has come, Picardy is for sale. In a weird way, I’m really excited. Probably because our savings account would like a friend at the moment considering how much money we’ve spent right off the bat at our new house getting all new services for things that are broken and not working. Also, for as attached as I usually am to animals or inadiment objects instead of people, I strangely am more ready to let Picardy go. Which is really refreshing. I think what ties me to it more is just that Zoe has said that she misses her old house, but I know that will just take time. We’ll still get to see out friends, we’ll still visit the street, we just have a new house.

I thought it would be fun to sort of do a “Before & After” post of when we first got the house, to how it looks now that it’s for sale and staged. Some of the photo angles won’t match up because the pictures I took 7+ years ago aren’t of the same angle as the staging photos. Let’s get to it

The front of the house before

And after

This makes me so happy. I loved the house’s architecture when we first saw it, but it definitely wasn’t shining as much as it could have. I love the paint we used and the landscaping I think is still one of my favorite projects of all time just because how successful it was.

The dining room

After

We of course used this room for our TV room, but I definitely feel that it’s better served as a dining room. I wish the photo on the website showed the hutch we built. But all the windows that are open to this room are also a really big plus.

Nook

This one is probably the most underwhelming, just because besides paint and a new light we didn’t really do much. But the room was awesome to start really.

Kitchen

Got damn I love that room. And god damn I think we did a really good job. It was so closed off before. I love how open we made everything. Love that. And I still love the color and the green granite. I will ALWAYS love those glass bin pulls.

The Den

We used this room as Chris’ office, but staged it as a den/office. I’m glad we didn’t repaint this room. I like the dark color in contrast with all the windows and light this room gets. And that round fireplace is still awesome as ever.

The front room (this is my favorite staged room)

Other angles

This room looks really, really beautiful. We used it as a junk pile room, lol. But this staging does it justice. It’s a beautiful formal living room and someone will hopefully love and appreciate this room for just that.

Our bedroom

I don’t love the staging in here, it’s too bulky and dark for my taste. But this room feels a lot lighter, and that’s awesome because it felt so cavernous before. And of course we added the bathroom that used to have the entrance off of the laundry room to be an en suite – one of my favorite things we did to the house…

The master bathroom

Hot damn that bathroom is pretty 🙂 And WAY better than the disgusting mess it was with plywood floors when we moved in.

The main bathroom

I’ve come around to liking the light color I picked more. Though I still think it’s a little too cool. But it does make the bathroom feel really light and airy, so that’s good. I love this bathroom too. I like the mix of modern and traditional that we went with. And I still feel like even 5 years later after we renovated it, it doesn’t look too shabby.

The kid’s room

We staged this room with two twin beds to show that kiddos could share a room. I didn’t like the light color when it was still my office, but now I actually think it’s a great kid’s room color. And the little porch off of this room that was Zoe’s room adds some square footage to this space…

The animal room before (named that way because it was DISGUSTING and smelled like wet dog)

Super cute little play area for kiddos. This is nice because the bedroom that the kids would share (if there were two) isn’t giant, so having this little space to add to it as a playroom, or work area when they get older is really nice I think.

The laundry room

Light, airy and practical. Everything I would want in a utility space. I really love this room.

The garage

It definitely looks sad without all of our tools in here anymore. But hopefully someone who tours the house really likes woodworking or DIY and they put this space to good use because we’re leaving so many of the storage and workspace elements behind.

And lastly, the backyard

I wish we painted over where the smoke is from the BBQ, but what are you going to do, ya know? I love the backyard. I love the paver patio, the raised beds, the grass, the cherry blossom, the painted garage, the fact that there isn’t a garbage pile anymore 🙂

Well, what do you think? How do you like it?

Pretty crazy that it’s for sale now. If you’re a local the last open house is this Sunday, feel free to go look – I know I would, lol 🙂 Last weekend at the open house our agent said that she had well over 100 people, and she said she feels like a good open house is 60-70 people. Lots of neighbors had awesome things to say because they knew what it looked like before. It really gave me a great sense of pride and I really felt awesomely proud of ourselves. I am usually incredibly hard on myself and have a hard time saying, “I did a good job,” but I really am proud of Chris and I. And it’s weird to think this project is “done.”

Offers are due in the middle of the week next week. So think really good thoughts for us! And of course, I’ll keep you updated 😉

Merritt: 9 months

March 30, 2016

Oh, hello adorable baby who hit 9 months last week

Obligatory comparison 9 month shot

Cuties

I must confess, I didn’t take many notes about this month. I think it must have been the move or something… 🙂 Let’s get to it though.

The morning I took these photos Zoe was playing with stickers. I was going to take them off Merritt’s face. But then, I didn’t. Obviously it’s a representation of being a second kid. The funny part was that Merritt had no reaction when Zoe was putting them on her. She just kept going about her business. I love those girls.

The biggest development this month is her rapid CRAWLING. So fast. She went from thinking about it, scooting around, getting from here and there at her leisure to busting her ass to get from place to place. She’s a speedy little machine.

The funniest thing is the way she crawls. Usually it’s on all fours like most kiddos. But it seems like she might not like it so much, so she’ll modify things in one of two ways. 1) she’ll outstretch one leg (always the left) so it’s straight out, and she’ll sort of half slide/crawl along on her left foot and her right shin. It’s pretty hilarious. And 2) she just gets right up on her feet in a downward facing dog position and “crawls” like that – on her hands and feet. My grandma said my dad did the same thing when he was little.

When she’s not quite sure where I am she’ll crawl around grunting. She’ll move from room to room, grunt to see if we call back to her. If we don’t, she moves on looking for us. It’s pretty smart, and always makes me giggle.

One of her FAVORITE things is when Zoe gets on the ground and crawls with her. Obviously Zoe is much faster, so she’s usually far ahead of her, and Merritt just thinks that is HILARIOUS. She cracks up about it. I love hearing that baby giggle.

Merritt and Zoe have gotten good at “playing together.” Obviously they can’t really play together too much yet, but a couple days ago they were in Merritt’s room together and Chris and I were downstairs talking about a project and I could hear Zoe reading to her, them giggling, etc for about 15 minutes.

The bummer about this month for Merritt was the move. Ooh god did she have a tough time. I was all prepared for Zoe, but didn’t think AT ALL that Merritt would have such a hard time. She was over her stranger danger, but she had so much separation anxiety about the new surroundings that she would just start crying as soon as I left the room sometimes 🙁

And the sleep, ooh god the sleep. As I mentioned before, naps were particularly awful. SCREAMING crying for sometimes up to an hour. I think it was the perfect storm of the move + getting a cold + learning a new skill (standing ALL THE TIME) and it just resulted in super crankies 🙁 I was both INCREDIBLY frustrated because I was getting NOTHING done, but I also felt so incredibly bad for her. It was maddening. The good news is (fingers crossed) the last couple of days she seems to have figured the naps out a little better, so that’s really good.

Towards the end of 9 months she started pulling herself to standing. She didn’t really get that she should pull herself up onto something. She would get herself in that downward facing dog position and then sort of try to yank herself up to standing from that position. She didn’t seem to get how difficult that was. But she finally would crawl to the end of something or someone and pull herself to standing. Funny kid.

Food: THE BEST. I thought Zoe could eat. But jesus christ this fucking kid can put it away. I’ll nurse her, she’ll eat a pouch of food, then another one, then a small tupperware of blueberries or strawberries, and then she might grunt for more and more food. On the weekends when I make pancakes I’ve gotten to the point where I make a whole one just for her. Sometimes she’ll eat more than Zoe. It’s crazy. She’s growing a lot, moving around a lot – she’s gotta fuel up! It’s so funny though because if you’re eating something she will STARE you down and just start grunting, “GIVE ME SOME.” She LOVES when we eat my lunch salad together. I put black beans, corn, shredded cabbage, shredded carrots, sunflower seeds, raisins and hardboiled egg in it. She loves to eat all the additions in the salad. She just stands against me while I eat waiting to get her forkfulls between my forkfulls. It’s rather adorable.

Her stats?

Height: 29.75″ (97%)

Weight: 17 lbs 0.7 oz (35%)

She’s been in her curve of 90-100% of height and 30-40% for weight consistently (accidentally wrote 90% for weight last time as I was on autopilot from Zoe, lol). I was a little nervous that she only gained 2 pounds in 3 months (TYPICALLY they gain 1 pound a month), but she’s still right in her curve and takes (literall) 5 craps a day, so the doctor said she just had a really fast metabolism. She’s my little lean machine. I thought it was hard to keep pants on Zoe because she was so skinny, but Merritt can absolutely not wear anything but leggings because she’s so tall, but so lean. Anything that doesn’t have a 100% elastic waist just completely falls off of her. And all her onesies and shirts look so big on her because tehy fit her length wise, but she just swims in them as far as the width. I still just think it’s so funny to have these tall girls. I’ve always had to roll my pant legs because I’m on the shorter/average height scale with really short legs, so things were always way too long on me. Nature is a funny thing.

Welp, that’s the 9 month mark. I’m wondering if she’ll be taking some steps on her own by the 10 month mark. We shall see! 🙂

The State of Things

March 28, 2016

I’m going to TRY super hard to get 3 posts up this week. We’ll see if I can make it happen. THERE IS SO MUCH I WANT TO POST ABOUT but holy Jesus there is just not enough time. Sigh. Merritt is STRUGGLING at nap time. Like, screaming crying. Bedtime is pretty good now (although last night she screamed and cried for 2+ hours), but she just will fucking refuse at least one of her naps a day. If not both. It makes getting caught up at all extremely hard because so much mental energy is spent trying to either get her to sleep, or just to not go insane myself. And without my computer hooked up for almost 2 weeks, I have a lot of fucking work to get caught up on. Ooh, and there are boxes everywhere still 🙂 Boxes everywheeeeere 🙂

But you know what, this house is fucking awesome. Like, amazing. There is SPACE, the birds fucking chirp, Zoe loves to play in the front, there is room to put stuff away. Ohhhh I love it. Love. It’s amazing to be here.

Would you like to see how “here” is going? Well, prepare to be underwhelmed 🙂

The living room

I would like to point out how awesome it is that we have the TV set up. We don’t let Zoe watch a ton of TV, but even her outlook changed when she was able to watch Mary Poppins. That’s really when I think she sent most comfortable here – it felt like the old house. It’s wonderful for Chris and I to get a little time each evening to relax and watch some crappy TV. Some nights we don’t take enough of a break and we work, but it’s wonderful to have it available.

Notice the boxes? 🙂

Yup. We’ve got a LOT of books we need to figure out what to do with. The theme of this house will be built ins (MANY built ins), but until they get built, boxes and boxes and boxes (like, literally maybe 50) of CDs, DVDs and books will need to find a home.

The dining room and kitchen

I got the kitchen unpacked first after the girls were set up. Being able to find plates, food, etc is essential in feeling like you’re not camping.

We bought a nice fridge. We opted to buy the one we would have after the kitchen remodel because there aren’t really very many different versions of fridges that we care about. I just wanted one that was counter depth and Chris wanted a water dispenser. So we found one that fit the bill on sale ( just under $2k with a water dispenser inside the door).

We bought a shitty used stove. I walked into a sketchy used appliance place and literally asked, “Where is your cheapest working gas stove?” Got this baby for $240 with delivery and hook up, and honestly it works just about as well as our “fancy” stove at Picardy that we got for almost $1k more

We don’t know what kind of stove we’ll want when we do the kitchen remodel in however many years (I’m trying to convince Chris to go with induction cooktop). So we decided it wasn’t worth spending a significant amount of money on an appliance we weren’t sure about in the long run.

There are A TON of cabinets that we literally only have a little more than 1/2 full. There is so much room in this kitchen compared to what I’m used to. The “pantry wall” is kind of messy. I’d prefer to have a closed pantry area. I’ve started a list of how I’d like to improve the layout of the room that way when we do redo it, we’ll really know what we want to do with it.

You’ll also notice we have a new dining room table. We bought it in NextDoor for $100 a few months ago. I love it. I can’t wait to cover it in my sports tickets because obviously we’re never going to have time to finish building that table ourselves.

Merritt’s room

Nothing that crazy. I reused curtains from Picardy (like how horribly sized they are?) and lined it with blackout fabric. She’s got the furniture from Zoe’s old room (which was from my old office). I’ll wait till Merritt is about 2-3 to really do this room. It’s hard to really nail down her personality as far as how to decorate it, or if she has a favorite color, etc., and I really don’t want to do things twice.

I love her closet

Ahhhh the Ikea Pax closets. I LOVE THEM. And holy shit is it awesome for each girl to have a closet because neither of them had one at Picardy.

Zoe’s room

Well, this was a fail. I was hoping to have this room done before we moved in. But well, that didn’t happen. There was a week between getting the keys and moving, and life was just too full. So, in the meantime we’ve got curtains (literally) stapled to the wall 🙂 Zoe doesn’t seem to mind though.

We had to patch in a few places. Most notably the vent for the new furnace is now in the floor instead of the wall. We need to mud, tape and texture, but after that we’ll get to painting! Then I can properly hang her curtains and get everything hung on the wall. Ooh my god I’m SO EXCITED to hang everything on the walls.

Our bedroom

Yeaaaahhhhh.

This room is DEPRESSING. The good news is that carpet should be going in in about a week. And that will be WAY better than these concrete floors. And things just feel dirty. We need to rip off the baseboards before carpet goes down.

I’d like to say after that we could get a can of paint on the walls, but because of cracks in the walls, we’d like to rip down some of the drywall and add plywood for shear strength. It’s not a super high priority, so it’ll wait a while. And so will paint.

I’ll also have to figure out how to furnish the room. It’s the biggest bedroom I think I’ve had in my entire life. I don’t actually like big bedrooms, I’d rather have the square footage in communal spaces. It’s not like I’m having a party or doing casual reading in there, so for me it doesn’t really make sense. I know I could have a chair or two, but it doesn’t really feel like “us.” There is obviously time to figure this out.

The big room

We were calling this room “the office,” but there will be our computers, a TV, a nice big couch and the washer/dryer, so we felt it needed a different name. Things feel pretty disheveled in here, but a huge improvement over a week ago.

Our computers are set up now and we’re reusing bookcases from my office

Down the line we’ll build a GIANT built in along that long wall (I told you, many built ins). But for now, reusing those works. I’ve still got office supplies to unpack, we need to set up a couple more things for the TV, we need to get a couch, and we obviously need to get the laundry up and running. You like that GIANT hole in the wall along the back?

We’re making slow progress getting things hooked up, but that’s for another post 🙂

So there you have it! Of course there are bathrooms, but that’s not really that exciting. And the garage. But I’m planning to write a post about that all on its own because we got a new slab poured and all the drywall ripped down. Progress!

We were hoping to start the exterior paint in the next week or two, but we’ve got to put it on hold for at least a month. We’re currently bleeding money on this place, so we want to wait till after Picardy sells and we get our savings account replenished a bit. Spending $12k on a brand new furnace is enough to make you choke on your spit a little 🙂

What do you think? Suggestions? Opinions?

Ooh! The view

Hot motherfucking damn that view has not gotten one bit old. Like, not even 0.00000001%. I LOVE seeing it every morning when I wake up. And many times throughout the day I stop what I’m doing and just look outside. Ahhhhhhhh. God damn it’s peaceful here.

I know, i know, i need to post

March 21, 2016

Well, it’s been a week since the move and we’re still in chaos! Things have been pretty eventful the last 7 days: the furnace got replaced (took 4 days instead of 2), we moved in, our internet didn’t work, the dishwasher didn’t work, we set up a TV for the kiddo, got things moved to “resemble” a living room, cleaned and sealed the concrete floors downstairs, cleaned up all the trash, chris kept up with his day job… As you can tell it’s been a little crazy.

I’m posting this from my phone because we still don’t have our office set up. The furnace took much longer than they thought, which means we couldn’t clean the floors, which means we couldn’t seal them, which means we couldn’t unpack our computers, etc. Which also means I’m earning $0 because virtually all my work from home when not baseball or football season is done on my computer, so that’s hard.

The kiddos are transitioning okay. Zoe had a rough first couple of days, but now seems to be doing a lot better (she got a present each morning when she slept like a big girl in her new big girl room). Merritt on the other hand is a bit of a mess. Poor kid. She’s having a super hard time going down for naps, but has gotten a lot better about bedtime. She’s got SUPER separation anxiety going on. Already that time for a lot of kids and combined with her routine and environment changing so drastically. For several days she would erupt into tears when she didn’t see me. And she went a few days with very very very little napping. The separation is going better, but she’s currently crying about napping right now. Poor kid.

The GOOD news is that despite my completely frazzled self at the moment, the new house is AMAZING. AMAZING. AMAZING. It feels GOOD to be here. It feels GOOD to have space. It feels GOOD to have a yard that Zoe (and soon Merritt) can run around and play in. It feels GOOD to feel so at peace – we walk outside and the birds chirping, at night the stars are clearer and the green rolling hills we look at out the back every day are enough to make me swoon. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

Don’t worry, I’m hoping to get to posting soon. We’ve got lots of updates: where we’re at, the new concrete slab in the garage, the new furnace, asbestos tile abated, floors sealed, we’re hoping to start exterior paint next week, Picardy goes on the market later this week…. I just need those computers hooked up. And a couple minutes to get it done 🙂

I hope you stick with it with us!

Good Bye Picardy

March 14, 2016

MOVING DAY IS HERE!!! So while we’re running around like fucking chickens with our heads cut off allllllll day today, I just wanted to take a moment out to give a little ode to Picardy. This house, and street, and community I have loved so much for 7 years.

First off, one of the people I follow on Instgram is an artist called Phoebe Atkey. I love when her drawings pop up a couple times a day. They range from jewelry, to architecture, to fashion. And they are all S.T.U.N.N.I.N.G.

One day I thought the perfect way to honor our house would be to have a custom drawing made of Picardy. So I checked out her website and inquired if she did commissions – HOORAY, she did! I sent her some photos of the house and corresponded back and forth in email. About 10 days later I got our emailed drawing and another 5 or so days later I got our beautiful drawing in the mail

Amazing, no? I LOVE IT. I absolutely LOVE IT. I LOVE IT so so so so much. I CANNOT WAIT to frame it and hang it in our new house. It is beautiful and honors our sweet first home in the most perfect way. (And honestly I cannot recommend Phoebe more. Her prices were totally awesome, she was incredibly friendly, and well, her artwork is fucking amazing).

Now, more ways to honor Picardy….

I will miss the architecture

I cannot express the joy I would get each time driving down this street. Seeing all the sweet homes and seeing our special, sweet home. I loved when people who had never been down the street would express so much excitement at the gem they had found, “All these houses are so cool!” they would frequently express. That made me proud. It’s not like I had done anything special to get to take credit for this house or this street, but I still felt very proud each time I drove down it.

I will miss the sense of community

This street is fucking awesome. And the care with which all its residents take is amazing. People take so much care to live here. We have “Block Watchers.” They are folks who walk the street at various times of the day as neighborhood watch. We have a Yahoo group specific to our street so we can be all kept in the loop about goings on. We have Christmas Socials, Summer Socials, entire street wide garage sales…I mean, you couldn’t ask for a street that shares in community more.

I will miss Christmas and Halloween

Complete destinations in the area. We get SO MANY Halloween visitors, it’s insane. We go through pounds and pounds and pounds of candy every year. It’s gotten to the point where we only hand out one piece of candy to each visitor and we still spend about $75 each year in candy. I LOVE that so many people come to the street to share in our community. And the same goes for Christmas. That nearly every single house lights up (about 90% this past year) for the holidays is just about one of the happiest things to see in the evening in December. All the twinkle can’t help but make you smile. So. Much. Twinkle. And so much happy. I love that we have Christmas community celebrations for our street and for the larger community as well. It’s amazing. And makes people feel so much love. We’ll definitely be coming back for those holidays.

I will miss our neighbors

We hit the jackpot with our neighbors. People care so much, but also leave you be. A simple wave makes people happy, and then every few weeks or months you get a nice gab fest. We look out for each other. It’s just perfect.

I will miss Zoe’s (and our) friends

This one actually makes me pretty sad and makes my heart hurt a little bit. Our across the street neighbors have 4 kids – the oldest is in 6th grade and the youngest is about 2 weeks older than Merritt. Zoe LOVES their oldest. Like, ADORES. And he is the nicest older brother there is and is so, so, so, so sweet to her. I wrote down in her baby book how much she likes him. It’s the cutest thing in the world. If we’re getting out of the car and he waves to her she will come RUNNING into the house exclaiming, “Baraka wave to me! Baraka wave to me!” And one of my favorite things is to be able to just walk across the street and let our kids play together. We’ve of course become friends with the mom and dad and she and I text back and forth all the time. We’ve definitely become good friends. And that’s a wonderful thing. I love that Zoe has friends on the street that she could just run over and play with. My childhood best friend lived around the corner from me and that was awesome. Chris always laments how it was rough that he lived so far away from all of his friends and so he felt really isolated growing up. I hope hope hope that Zoe is able to have friends who live close by in the new house.

I will miss the memories we created

I can’t really actually think about this one too much. It makes me sad if I really dwell on it. Obviously we redid this house from the ground up. Every single room was touched. Every single room was transformed. We cried. We yelled. We learned SO MUCH while going through that together. But there was also so much pride and happiness in those experiences and I felt so much joy in that. Obviously the renovations gave us thousands of memories. But, then there are the supremely sentimental memories: we decided to have babies, we brought home our Zoe girl, we got married, we got pregnant with Merritt, we brought home our second adorably smiley baby girl and we started a business together. All here. I can still remember SO VIVIDLY the exact place where Zoe took her official first steps. There are so many sweet stories and tear inducing memories. I will never forget that.

Oh Picardy, how I adore thee 🙂

There are some things I will not miss. But let’s just gloss over those:

The people FLYING down the street going WAY TOO FUCKING FAST – because the street has no stop signs or speed bumps like others in the area so people use it as a thoroughfare. And seriously sometimes go close to 45/50 mph with kids running around playing. It ALWAYS freaks me the fuck out.
The crime – two immediate next door neighbors have been broken into, as well as our behind our house neighbor. That is close to home. Many houses on the street have been broken into and it feels like we are almost biding our time.
The residual crime – we live very close to a bad neighborhood and have had 2 cars drive down the street shooting each other once when we lived here for a year or two.
Wondering if the loud noises at night are fireworks, a car backfire or gunshots – about 3 weeks ago at night we were SURE we heard fireworks, but it actually happened to be a series of gunshots 1 street away

There are other little things here and there that I will both love/miss and some that I am not sad to say goodbye to, but that is my ode to this street.

We were lucky to move onto a street that had such a sense of history and community already when we moved here. And we felt so lucky to get to breathe life into a home that had been forgotten about for so long. We feel like we did this home good.

Work on the Office and Never Before Seen Closet

March 11, 2016

We’ve never really planned to do anything in this room – which is good because now the plan is to move. It’s weird though. I feel like with every room in the house there has been a final vision, or at least things I imagine doing. But not with this room. That’s a very strange thing to me. So it’s good that I’m not going to be missing out with this room, which is a bit of a shame because the round fireplace in this room is very cool.

One thing that does need to be done in this room though is repair to the ceiling

In all the time we’ve been here this ceiling has been peeling away. Surprisingly over the last 7 years we haven’t really had any plaster fall down on us. So that’s a good thing. But with it on the list of things needing to get done before we move it’s time to get to it.

Most of the time with this house the plaster has been so damaged that we need to do work to reattach it to the lathe. This plaster isn’t in that bad of condition, it just needed to be scraped down where it’s peeling and then a skim coat done over the whole thing. First Chris taped over all the egregious cracks. This helps for stronger joints when the mud is applied. After that was done he applied mud over all the cracks and uneven parts

Once that work was done it was time for a skim coat over the entire ceiling. Zoe has actually gotten pretty interested in a lot of the work going on around the house lately. She’s always been interested in doing what we’re doing and being a part of what’s going on with the grown ups. But it’s been really fun to see because it’s been a while since we’ve actually WORKED on this house on any sort of a consistent basis. It’s cool to actually get to work on things while having kids run around, but that one of them actually wants to help us. She was really good at slowly pouring water into our bucket while Chris thinned out the joint compound

She was pretty adorable during the whole endeavor 🙂

After the skim coat was done Chris applied the texture on the ceiling. And again, Zoe insisted on helping

Chris has gotten really good at replicating the original plaster texture throughout our house. We want to make sure any of our “new” spaces look like the original spaces. After texture was applied it was time for primer and paint. And then it was done! (again, Zoe “helps” lol)

It’s fucking WEIRD to see this ceiling bright white without peeling plaster. We were “supposed” to paint this room for resale, but decided not to. There are too many windows and doors and that curved fireplace, so we decided it’ll just get some REALLY bright bulbs instead. It’s strange, but it’s been 7 years. 7 years of peeling plaster. And how it’s clean and done.

Another weird space to see done. The closet. What closet? This is a GIANT closet and we never did ANYTHING to it since we moved in

There was great writing on the wall from the previous owners

And the plaster was cracked and damaged. We never did anything in the 7 years we were here though because we just lined all the walls with bookcases and put all of our DVDs in here (we’ve got well over 1,000 – I told you, we love movies). It was the perfect “DVD closet” for us. But again, now that we’re moving, it was time to finally get to repairing it.

There was a window in the back of the closet (the laundry room that backs into this used to be a porch, so the window in here looked out on the porch). It was taken out well before we lived here and the trim was damaged and only partially in place. We decided it made the most sense to close up the window and patch the wall with drywall.

Chris took out the damaged trim and then was left with the back wall that needed to be patch. He put up some blocking and then installed a drywall patch. After the patch was installed it was time to mud and tape. Not only the area where the patch was done, but throughout the space (there were lots of cracks and holes throughout).

After the patches Chris applied primer on the bottom portion of the closet where the wallpaper was. It was OLD and damaged, so we painted over it. But the primer wasn’t regular primer – it helped make sure the wallpaper adhered to the wall and blocked the stain in from the wallpaper glue. And it stank like shit. I HATED it. I’ve always been really sensitive to smells, and since having kids it’s made my smell powers have super strength. I’m normally the painter, but because it was so awful, Chris applied both coats

And then because he’s a rockstar, he also applied the color coat in here also unbeknownst to me. I feel like I’ve been painting everywhere lately, so it was a nice little treat to ask Chris over dinner a couple nights ago what paint I should use in the closet for the color coat only to have Chris tell me he’d already done it

That’s a good husband.

It was pretty quick an easy of a space to redo. I wonder why we didn’t do it 7 years ago…

It’s Time to Demo Some Shit

March 9, 2016

It’s been a long time since I took a sledgehammer to anything 🙂 But this past Friday night while Chris’s sister listened to the girl’s monitors after they fell asleep, Chris and I headed over to the new house and did just that 🙂

When we got there we discovered that nearly none of the lights worked in the office (since then Chris has figured things out), so we had to do our demo by work light. Not ideal, but hey, it worked.

Remember this ridiculous brick pony wall that separated the back of the room?

Welp, it went bye bye thanks to my 7 years of playing baseball. I took a sledgehammer to that mofo and about 5 minutes later it was down, hooray! Chris was working on installing some utility shelving in the basement while I was going to town, but when he came back I was a little tired from my sledgehammer adventures so he ripped down the cabinets

Like how we had to work by work light? Yeah, that sucked. Something is all fucked up with some of the lights in the house, so we need to address that as well. But at least the work light is powerful so it actually wasn’t too bad. Little by little though we got there

It took about 60 minutes for us to get from start to finish, which isn’t too bad at all

And this past weekend CBH came over to help out and actually hauled ALLLLLL the bricks up to the front of the house and into the dumpster on the driveway. So that was super awesome. And then we got the rest of it cleaned up on Monday night (another late night date working while family listened to the girl’s monitors)

Along this back wall we’ll install the washer and dryer. The hookups are currently in the garage, but we don’t want to take up valuable floor space in the garage, and this seemed like the best option. Certainly it’s not ideal to have the washer and dryer in an office, but this room is so fucking big (over 500 square feet) that I don’t mind as much. This room will sort of function in 3 ways – living area, office and utility space. It’s big enough to take on all 3 tasks, so it’s okay. And, honestly, we’re very informal people, I don’t really care too much.

The question is what to do about the flooring. We’re getting the furnace replaced, and all the ducting has asbestos, which obviously needs to be remediated. The floor tiles in here have asbestos as well, so we asked the company how much it would cost to remove these tiles as well right now (something we would want to do eventually anyway). The price wasn’t too bad ($1500 for the ducting, $3500 for the tiles as well in this room as well as our bedroom underneath the god awful carpet). We decided to just bundle it all together and get it done now. That is actually happening today. Hooray!

The flooring in the bedroom will be carpet (which we picked out this weekend)

The measure was yesterday and we’re not sure about install yet. But for the time being (probably 2 weeks) we’ll just put our bed in the office while we wait for the carpet to be installed. We made sure to get a really nice pad because this room is sitting on a concrete slab, so we want to make sure it doesn’t feel like that.

We thought we would want carpet in the office too, but once the pony wall was down I really liked the idea of one continuous flooring throughout the space because the room feels so much more open now. And obviously carpet is not so great with the appliances. And there’s also a door to the backyard in this room and so that would constantly be getting dirty. Hardwood? Laminate? Something more industrial? We’re not sure. So we’ve decided that we’ll live with the concrete subloor until we decide (and have the money to buy) the flooring we really want.

18 Coats of Paint

March 7, 2016

First off: I realize that now we have a ton of projects that will be happening, and not nearly the equivalent time to blog. As a result I’ll probably be behind the next couple of weeks (maybe even months). I’d really like to commit to blogging 3 times a week, but even that frequency probably won’t be able to keep me completely up to date with what’s going on. So, please be patient 🙂 I’ll be filling you in on all the happenings as we move along, but just because life is, well, life, it will take me a little while to keep you up to date. I have to say I’m excited to have so much work to blog about again 🙂 🙂 🙂

Alright, now let’s get down to business.

This is a short story about 18 coats of paint. Thankfully it’s not 1 project, but 3. The first project? These bookcases

We got these bookcases from my step dad (frequently called CBH here on this ol’ blog) because he just sold the house he and my mom lived in. And a quick side note – you may be wondering why I refer to it as HIM selling the house THEY used to live in. Well, about 4 years ago they separated. And then recently they got divorced. Yes, very sad. I was very sad. But, the good news about my family is that we are very weird – my mom and dad still get along great, and my mom and step dad still get along great. We are a very successfully divorced family. And I LOVE that. My mom and Zoe frequently have breakfast dates with CBH when my mom watches her and I still see him a lot. Technically speaking I guess he is not actually my “step dad” anymore – but my mom and he got together when I was so young that he will always be my step dad. And his son will always be my step brother. They’re family. And they are another uncle and grandpa to my girls. That’s just how we roll.

Okay? 🙂 Moving on.

So we inherited this bookcase from my step dad when he was getting rid of some of the furniture he and my mom used to have. This is actually one in a pair, and I thought they would be perfect for Zoe’s new room. The only kicker was that I wasn’t too much of a fan of the super yellow pine. I wanted to give it a little bit of a makeover. Painting it crisp white with a bright, fun color in the back I thought would jazz it up just right. The only thing was this took A LOT of paint. 10 coats in all. Not ALL OVER, but 10 different coats.

It started with 4 coats of primer

I honestly should have used a better stain blocking primer and I could have gotten away with maybe one less coat. The Glidden primer wasn’t good at blocking the knots and yellow finish to the wood

But after 4 coats I was done. And I moved on to the color coat.

I used Benjamin Moore Advance. Chris did a really good paint test for what the best interior, semi-gloss, white trim paint (still need to finalize that post…) and I followed the advice of that test for what the best paint to use was – it covered well, and held up to scratching (and Zoe will probably beat this to shit).

I got started

The good thing was that this only took 2 coats of paint, yay!

Then I moved on to the color in the back. One time a couple weeks ago when we were at HD I picked out a couple BRIGHT colors that I could recall were in her fabric and held up the 3 swatches for Zoe and let her pick the color she wanted. She picked Ralph Lauren Racer Pink (I got it color matched in Glidden). The thing about reds and deep pinks like this is it really takes a couple coats for good coverage. I haven’t found that the paint/primer in one really helps. So it took 4 coats of this paint to really give it a good, even coverage

The good news is that after the TEN coats of paint (4 primer, 2 color coats, 4 pink coats on the back), it was finally done

And I actually love it. I’m not a super big pink fan myself, but I do actually really love the bold, bright and saturated color. Good pick Zoe 🙂

The next 5 coats of paint? The mirror.

Zoe loves a mirror that my mom had in her apartment. My mom is currently living in Croatia. Yes, Croatia. She took off on some European travels a few years ago and fell in love with the country. She’s been back several times and recently decided that she wanted to spend 50% of her time living over there. So that’s what she does now 🙂 In the process of making that decision she pared down her life a lot and got rid of a lot of furniture (she’ll live a couple months of the time here in the Bay Area and then go down to San Diego and live with my brother and his wife a couple of weeks a year as well). Yes, she is a fabulous gypsy 🙂 One of the things she was getting rid of was this giant mirror that Zoe took a particular liking to when my mom had it propped up on the ground

I had wanted a mirror in her room and my mom asked if I wanted this one. Perfect. I thought a new paint job would spruce it up well. And because I liked that bright pop of Racer Pink so much with the bookcases I thought it would be perfect for the mirror as well.

I probably could have saved myself maybe ONE coat if I had used primer. But I didn’t. So covering up the blue took 5, even coats

But that is pretty pretty, right?

That’s 15 coats right there. Where’s the other 3? Zoe’s light fixture.

I went off to hunt for something to repurpose several weeks ago. I found this crazy light

Yes, I know, it looks a little insane. But I like that it was a little different. And I thought painting it a bright color and switching out this glass dangles would make it work. I want Zoe’s room to be FUN, and this light made me think of that.

So when we went to the hardware store a couple weeks ago I did the same thing – I picked a couple cans of a bright color of spray paint and she picked Plum. We taped off the light and hung it in the garage ready for painting. Zoe was very interested in the process so we actually let her paint some. Spray paint is obviously not good to inhale, so we just let her spray a couple of bursts. Then we went outside and let Chris paint it all. And 3 coats later it was done. I of course forgot to take a picture of it 🙂 I still need to hang the new wire and dangles, but I’ll get to that later this week. Hopefully.

There you have it: 10 coats on the bookcases, 5 on the mirror, and 3 on the light. Obviously we’re playing a lot of painting catch up for the lack of work we’ve been doing the last several years 🙂

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